World Bank to stop funding oil & gas projects

Projects that extract oil and gas will no longer receive funding from the World Bank after 2019.

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim made the announcement at the One Planet Summit convened by President Emmanuel Macron of France and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The bank said that it would only fund gas projects for the poorest countries in “exceptional circumstances”.

To qualify for finance, such projects would still have to fit within each countries’ commitments to the Paris Agreement.

‘The end is coming’

Stephen Kretzmann, Executive Director of the Oil Change International advocacy group, said: “It is hard to overstate the significance of this historic announcement by the World Bank.

“The World Bank has raised the bar for climate leadership by recognising the simple yet inconvenient truth that achieving the Paris agreement’s climate goals requires an end to the expansion of the fossil fuel industry.”

Greenpeace International campaigner Gyorgy Dallos added: “The end is clearly coming for the oil and gas industry as the pace of change accelerates.”